My boyfriend was asking me about a comment Crowley made in which he said something admiring of Hitler. I finally found the source, it was in a pamphlet made by artists. I read: A brief questionnaire was sent “To the Writers and Poets of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales.” The simple question that was asked of each was: “Are you for, or against, the legal Government and the People of Republican Spain? Are you for, or against, Franco and Fascism?” The final pamphlet was titled "Authors take Sides on the Spanish War" and was published by the Left Review, London 1937. Some of the author’s remarks are neutral, others are speaking out for Franco and, of course, Aleister Crowley’s comment in the pamphlet is referred to as being ‘violent.’ All he wrote was: “Franco is a common murderer and pirate: should swing in chains at Execution Dock. Mussolini, the secret assassin, possibly worse. Hitler may prove a ‘prophet’; time will judge.”

I had in my possession, for several years, Crowley's personal copy of Hitler Speaks, a book documenting personal conversations with Hitler out of the public eye. AC had annotated the margins most of the way through. The annotations changed, over the course of the book.

Most of the annotations, especially in the beginning, were documenting where Hitler's private conversation language was laced with nearly verbatim quotes from Crowley's writings, particularly The World's Tragedy. Another key is that Crowley had heard from Martha Kuntzel (S.'.H.'. Soror I.W.E. 8=3) that she had put Liber Legis in Hitler's hands, and the book spoke of a woman (his confidante and, just maybe, the book referred to her as a magick teacher) that AC thought sounded like her. Crowley saw Hitler having, initially, a solid vision of Liber Legis anmd how an individual nation should apply it such that, as an embodiment of The Law, that nation would naturally emerge as the dominant governing force of the planet. Then, most of the way through Hitler Speaks, Crowley saw flaws in Hitler's understanding of The Book's message, and made a margin note something to the effect that this is where Hitler went off course and began to fall. (I kept a photocopy of the whole thing - it's around the house somewhere - could find it one of these days.)

So, he apparently did consider that he might emerge as a prophet - if he got the thing with Liber L. right on the national and world-span level - but later felt that he hit a wall in his understanding and failed.

Tornado93 wrote:It is troubling, though, that Crowley would ever consider Hitler a prophet, in light of what the Nazis did.

Remember, most of that (especially regarding the Holocaust) wasn't known outside of Germany until World War II was over. Hitler at the time wasn't considered a monster in any respect, but simply a military and political threat (yet as the economic and social-political salvation of the German people).

If I knew exactly what your friend's cioncern was, I might have some facts that respond to them.

It seems to be a fact lost in the mists of convenient forgetfulness that very many people in the UK, the US and much of Europe liked Hitler and Mussolini during the 1930s. France has spent decades evading the issue of widespread collaboration with the Nazis, preferring instead to stress the tiny number of (mostly left-wing) resistance activists it had. Hitler had hordes of admirers across Europe and North America, and not just among the rich. And casual anti-Semitism was still a staple of middle-class discourse in England, even in the 1950s and early 60s. I can't imagine what it would have been like 30 years earlier, but you can include W. B Yeats, some of the circle around C.S. Lewis (read Charles Williams, a good occult novelist and a Jew-hater, if you don't believe me), Charles Lindbergh, Henry Ford and a fair proportion of the U.S. Congress among 1930s admirers of fascist-style, anti-semitic politics.

The publication you reference espoused a minority standpoint in the UK, not a mainstream one. The publishers, if they lived in the US today, would count as ultra-liberal Democrats and outright pinkos: the sort of people who are lampooned by Ann Coulter or the Tea Party crowd. They were just lucky to end up on the winning side, because the Nazis later compiled a list of people to execute when they took Britain, and most of them were on it.

Hitler set himself up not as a political leader, but a messianic one, and the guise of 'prophet' was one he adopted and cultivated as his magical personality. The famous phrase "Thousand Year Reich" was a slogan deliberately taken from Revelations, implying a Messianic role for Adolf. When he appeared to be simply someone fighting for the little guy (Nazi is an abbreviation for 'National Socialist,' remember) he was widely esteemed, at least until the Nuremberg Laws kicked in hard around 1937/38, and it also became simultaneously obvious that war was coming.

None of which excuses Crowley, who was (in my view) snobbish and ignorant about political issues generally, and rarely said anything practical or sensible on the subject. But if he had been a Hitler fan, he would have been in good company. Do note, though, that he put the word "prophet" in inverted commas, a signal to anyone who had been drilled in good punctuation (as were all English schoolkids then) of his ambiguous feelings about Der Fuehrer.

Crowley saw Hitler having, initially, a solid vision of Liber Legis anmd how an individual nation should apply it such that, as an embodiment of The Law, that nation would naturally emerge as the dominant governing force of the planet.

I have heard of this myth before, where the nation that takes up the law becomes babylon. My question is that since Hitler failed, which nation do you (jim, or anyone with an idea) think will be next in line to take up the book of the law? and will the outcome be a positive or negative form of some sort world government?

Should this question deserve its own thread?

A wizard is never late, Frodo Baggins. Nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to.

Alias55A wrote:I have heard of this myth before, where the nation that takes up the law becomes babylon. My question is that since Hitler failed, which nation do you (jim, or anyone with an idea) think will be next in line to take up the book of the law? and will the outcome be a positive or negative form of some sort world government?

Should this question deserve its own thread?

Maybe it should... let's see how it goes... thanks for being mindful of this and asking!

To give a quick opinion on the question: No nation in the immediate future. This won't be a quick transition.

It's quite clear to me that the United States was founded to be bearer of the primary initiated principles into the New World. This is deeply rooted in the Rosicrucian traditions handed down to us, and I am convinced of the evidence of it. The U.S. constitution alone is an extraordinary and unprecedented document in the history of the world, and provides the foundation for that possibility.

But, as Lincoln observed at the height of the Civil War, we are in periodic test of whether "that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure."

That is, having succeeded in bringing that constitution into being - a foundation step - the question is whether this nation can, in the long run, pull off the promise inherent in the premise.

I don't see that happening in the near future. And, possibly, it won't be this country, but another one inspired by the same core principles and architecture.

Remember also that the formal adoption of Liber Legis in any public sense, but merely the adoption and implementation of its principles. If done correctly, I think this would be enormously powerful. But it will take a great deal of social and political evolution to get on that track.

Or it may happen overnight! Maybe we just have to wait for 2063 when Zefram Cochrane will invent the warp drive and, within 10 years, the inhabitants of earth will completely conquer war, crime, and disease and live in a world governed by an emerging Prime Directive that, at root, is merely a paraphrase is, "Do what thou wilt" and "Every man and every woman is a star."

Edward Mason wrote:Hitler set himself up not as a political leader, but a messianic one, and the guise of 'prophet' was one he adopted and cultivated as his magical personality. The famous phrase "Thousand Year Reich" was a slogan deliberately taken from Revelations, implying a Messianic role for Adolf. When he appeared to be simply someone fighting for the little guy (Nazi is an abbreviation for 'National Socialist,' remember) he was widely esteemed, at least until the Nuremberg Laws kicked in hard around 1937/38, and it also became simultaneously obvious that war was coming.

None of which excuses Crowley, who was (in my view) snobbish and ignorant about political issues generally, and rarely said anything practical or sensible on the subject. But if he had been a Hitler fan, he would have been in good company. Do note, though, that he put the word "prophet" in inverted commas, a signal to anyone who had been drilled in good punctuation (as were all English schoolkids then) of his ambiguous feelings about Der Fuehrer.

93 93/93,

Edward

I was watching one of Hitler's speaches the other day, and it struck me: his hand movements look rather...magical. And then I examined the entirety of the Nazi image, ideology, etc. and it seemed that there was something much bigger going on than normally meets the eye.

Anybody recall the passage in "moonchild," where Simon Iff talks about the adepts starting WWI to clear the way for the new aeon?

Crowley was writing science fiction wayyyy before any of these modern imposteurs.

If I might. Some have already said it, but in the early years of the NSDAP(National Workers Party of Germany), to which Hitler belonged, were a mixture of street thuggish violence, and a sort of relief. If you actually go back, and study Germany in the earlier days of the Nazi party coming to power, you'll notice alot. Infantcy death rates were the lowest in the world, as were the populations of the jails and prisons, the homeless populations, children were going to school, people had work(which they didn't have anywhere near enough before), etc. There were alot of good things. It is also thought, at least at first, that Crowley didn't know what was going on behind his back(i.e. Himmler, who betrayed Bohr(?), the former leader of the SS, and who took it a darker route). The initial thing with the Jews was that they had alot of the jobs, and kept it in the Jew bloodline, while Germans starved in the streets. Hitler was taking them captive, and selling them back to their families(do you really think they became rich off Jewish tooth fillings and Jewelry?). The later years grew far darker, Hitler grew more imbalanced(not to mention his doctor was feeding him rat poison, which leads to insanity and death after so long). Hitler was, in the beginning, by many standards a bright light in the dark. Things changed. It might help to actually study the times a little, and maybe cross reference the dates to the historical happenings. Before things grew out of hand, Hitler was doing a good job. He held the potential to do good. As history shows, it didn't go that route. Just some things to think about, and things that any half-serious study of the subject will bring up.

The Nazi assault was a gradual ramping up of persecution and violence, but it wasted no time in getting started.

The same year (1933) that the Nazi party came to power, they set up concentration camps and passed laws restricting the rights of Jews. The Nuremburg Laws in 1935 completely stripped Jews of citizenship.

The educated in Europe outside Germany were all aware of what was going on. In 1936, Jung talks about Nazi Germany's "revival of the medieval persecutions of the Jews". EM already talked about the casual anti-semitic attitude that was common in America at the time. Reports of the persecution and the camps were dismissed as propaganda designed to lure us into the war for the sake of the Jews, who had infiltrated the media... so you could pretend you didn't believe the reports, but by 1940 anyone with half a brain knew they were kidding themselves.